transport applications

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Yes. I think it was a Xilinx FPGA in a trainboard air conditioning system. Normalair Garret IIRC. Can't be too certain as I only ever had a very brief glimpse.

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Jacek,

Yes we have FPGAs that have been used in railway equipment.

The problem is the sometimes close to ten year qualification process* for railway equipment, which means by the time it is qualified for use, the parts are well into their obsolesence.

If you have such an application, you should contact a Xilinx FAE, and discuss the best choice of product with them (one that we expect will be around for another > 20 years like the 2K has been, and the 3K will have been).

As always, if any of our products are used in an application where human life despends on the perfect functioning, see the very serious legal stuff at:

For example, we heard that a manufacturer wants to use an FPGA in a nuclear reactor control system. That certainly gets our attention, as we insisted that the design be done in such a way that is consistent with the application (ie fully TMR, dual redundant, hot standby, etc etc etc).

*(based on what I've heard about a certain railway equipment supplier)

Aust> Does anyone know some examples of using CPLD or FPGA devices in railways

Austin is right.. you need to contact them.. and any existing design in is probably of little consequence as parts evolve so quickly that its like the space shuttle.. all 1970's design and 30 years out of date :-)

There are so many issues involved (I had a look for my company once) that a lot of it is suck it and see... start with the specs. Find out which of the international specs (e.g. EN60950, ETSI, UL etc) you are designing to. Develop the concepts ... psu ... grounding etc. Work out what you want to do and how big an FPGA is required... do you want / need redundancy? Redundancy should have two different designers working in isolation to be truly redundant... do you need in circuit programming? Resets , Special IO etc... then contact suppliers.... they can be very helpful if you have lots of ideas... (and if you don't too) but you have to know what questions to ask first.

Just the voltage tolerance on the PSU itself can be a design challenge.

Simon

Errrm - won't the neutron/radiation count be just a tad above a sea level average, in a nuclear reactor control system ? And might it not (hypothetically of course) peak somewhat higher, just when it is rather important that said control system is operating ? Did this enquiry perhaps arrive on April 1st ?

-jg

Yes, we have recently designed and produced here in Catalonia some 192x64 LED displays with 16 gray levels EN 50155 compliant for the TGV Barcelona-Madrid. Those displays have a Xilinx XCS05 industrial grade as a coprocessor.

Regards

Narcis Nadal "Jacek Mocki" escribió en el mensaje news:c6anq7$7r$ snipped-for-privacy@news.onet.pl... Does anyone know some examples of using CPLD or FPGA devices in railways equipment?

Regards

Jacek

This reminds me, in the UK 80s, BR wanted to run high speed service with trains that tilted into the curve as speed required for the ever so old curvy track they didn't want to replace. I remember the tilted trains coming out of the curves locked up and lurching into the opposing track causing much embarrassment to their EEs.

What was the outcome, did they get it to work or did they settle for slow trains as usual? This was ofcourse way before FPGA, I expect the controller was TTL+8080s.

regards

johnjakson_usa_com

Jon,

Cheers, Syms.

The Swedes have had such tilting trains (S2000) for many years. I have taken it from Gothenburg to Stockholm 4 years ago, and the Italians have had them so early that they coined the name Pendolino. The Germans tried it with limited success. It provides high speed on an old-fashioned rail bed.

Peter Alfke ========================

Why do I want tilting trains? Why not bank the tracks more?

Is the problem something like a tight radius of curvature such that a long train would get pulled off the track as it went around the curve? (Maybe a long slow freight runs on the same tracks.)

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"Narcis Nadal" escribió en el mensaje news:unLic.4700406$ snipped-for-privacy@telenews.teleline.es...

did you mean "intensity" levels?

wasnt TGV a French train? i thought in Spain you had AVE or something

Legacy tracks do not have the appropriate bank.

(Telephone system analogy: we put expensive modems (ADSL, etc.) on the end of old twisted pair lines, since it's really expensive to replace the stuff that's already in the ground.)

Regards, Allan.

Hal Murray wrote: : > It provides high speed on an old-fashioned rail bed.

: Why do I want tilting trains? Why not bank the tracks more?

Because then, when an emergency braking has to be exercised, the train would fall over...

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Thanks Symon, things have changed so much that Virgin seems to run everything:-/

I believe the newer French track laid down for their highspeed is gently banked and with large turning space, well I've only seen tv snips in the countryside. I guess in UK (I left 20yrs ago) most of the track is in densely populated areas, too late to do anything about it. Perhaps the only place to put any new service would be near/over the motorway.

regards

johnjakson_usa_com

The Swedish S2000 tilting train is not pulled by a locomotive. It has electric motors driving every single car. The main reason for tilting is passenger comfort. The problem is that there must be enough room between the rail pairs for two trains to meet.

The French and Japanese laid new tracks for their TGV and Shinkansen trains, and the Germans did it in some places (Cologne-Frankfurt), but Sweden is a large country with relatively few people, so the economics are different Peter Alfke (likes to ride European trains...). ==============

TGVs run at full speed only on specially-laid, dedicated tracks with solid concrete track-bed. Not cheap. The usual UK legacy track (wooden sleepers, a few tons of dirty stone chippings for ballast) wouldn't be a lot of use.

A few years ago I read a French newspaper article suggesting that the TGVs have lots of power available from the overhead rail, and therefore slopes are much less of a problem than they were for traditional trains. But curves would dramatically limit the speed - you can't bank a railway curve very much, because you have to cope with the possibility of a stationary train on the banked section :-) Presumably the same thing applies to VERTICAL curves - you don't want the train, or its passengers, experiencing large local variations in 'g'.

Too late, too little will, land prices too high, railways badly out of fashion and suffering a serious image problem.

And spoil the motoring lobby's God-given right to extend the carriageway to 5 or 6 lanes each way? No hope. (Seriously - UK motorways often have curves that would be far too severe for TGV-class trains.)

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Hi John, I heard that the French have a much more 'robust' compulsary purchase scheme than other countries, i.e. Draw a straight line on the map between Paris to Lyons and that's where the railway's gonna go! Interesting idea about the Motorways, here in San Jose I go along Hwy 85 to work, (right past the Xilinx campus, as it happens, so I'm still on topic ;-)) which is a fairly new road. There's a light rail system along the central reservation (=Median for US readers!) for a fair part of the journey. No-one uses it, of course. No point in owning a Hummer and leaving it at home.... Jonathan's right about economics of new track in the UK. In order to do anything, you have to tunnel. Check out

The good thing about this is that French passengers will now arrive at St.Pancras. If you're French, I guess that's much better than terminating at Waterloo! cheers, Syms.

Here's a better link about the tunneling under London.

Guy Fawkes?

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I assumed they would have to fixup the tracks in order to make them good enough to go fast so it would be reasonable to fix the bank at the same time.

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